The lived experiences of nurses with perfomance reviews in a public hospital in the Eastern Cape Province : a phenominological approach

Performance Management and Development System (PMDS) is a process of harnessing human and material resources within an organisation to ensure maximum performance to achieve the desired results of improved quality of health service delivery. This study explored and described the ontological experiences of nurses of all categories with contracting and doing performance reviews in a public hospital in the Eastern Cape Province. Purposive sampling approach was used to recruit all categories of nurses Data was collected through unstructured, individual, in-depth interviews with professional nurses and focus group interviews with lower categories. Techs eight step data analysis method was employed to analyse data. Major findings were related to lack of supervisor cooperation, shortage of resources, difficulty in calculating the scores, lack of understanding the tool, time constraints and paperwork which results in the tool being viewed as time consuming. Positive findings were that experiences such as improved relations resulting from spending time with supervisors during performance review sessions. Guidelines were developed, based on the findings, to empower both nurse clinicians and the supervisors in the implementation of the PMDS. ,Health StudiesD. Litt. et Phil. (Health Studies